Thanks, Heath Bray: Remembering a memorable Wildcat

It was the morning of May 11, 2019. My phone was ringing. It was Heath Bray.

The news wasn’t quite public yet, and Heath had called to let me know that former Arizona Wildcats football coach Dick Tomey had died the night before after battling lung cancer.

We talked for about 30 minutes, Heath sharing stories, which is one of the things he did most passionately during and after his playing career with the Wildcats. As we were getting ready to hang up, he had some Heath Bray-like, slap-you-upside-the-helmet kind of encouragement for the memorial I was about to attempt to write.

“This better be the best f—ing story you ever write, Gimino,” he said.

It actually might have been more threat than encouragement.

I will treasure that.

The result from May 11, 2019, is a story for AllSportsTucson.com called “Thanks, Dick Tomey” and I don’t mind telling you it was the most emotionally difficult story I ever had to write.

But here we are again and right about now I really wish I had Heath Bray to tell me to write the best f—ing story ever about Heath Bray. Not sure I can. He died today, suddenly, an absolute devastation to the Arizona football family. He was 54.

I don’t what else there is to say, except this:

Thanks, Heath Bray.

Thanks for being an outspoken advocate for Arizona football. For being loud and lovable. For being the unofficial alumni spokesman. For always mocking Arizona State’s colors as “mustard and rust.”

Thanks for sharing this memory of playing against ASU with Javier Morales of AllSportsTucson.com:

“They were playing really good, looking for a bowl, and we came to Tempe for my first trip there,” Bray said about the 1989 game, won by Arizona 28-10 and famous for the Sun Devils being ridiculously dressed in all yellow.

“They were talking a lot of trash, but we were ready to go to the stadium, and we had our last meeting with the team in the hotel. Coach Tomey goes through the prep script and nothing is different than any other game. As we are about to leave, he stops and says, ‘Hold on, I have something to show you.’

“Then we all sit back down and the lights go out. On the big screen comes an interview with their center that he did the night before. He invites us to play smashmouth football, and calls out a couple of guys, Chris and Kevin Singleton, and Zeno Alexander, and then at the end says something to the effect of ‘Bring it on’ to the camera.

“Well, needless to say, the quite tense meeting went crazy. Everyone was on their feet screaming and jumping and Coach Tomey just yells out ‘Let’s go!’ and the rest is ‘Screaming Banana’ history. God, it’s easy to hate the mustard and rust.”

Friend (and foe) Juan Roque from Arizona State posted this to Facebook:

Thanks for coming to Tucson in 1988 all the way from Cherryville, North Carolina. Thanks for sticking through all the injuries, including back surgery. For arriving as a quarterback, moving to safety, then linebacker, back to quarterback and ending up at wide receiver for your final game.

Thanks for starting at middle linebacker against Miami in 1991. Thanks for starting at quarterback against Miami in 1992. Who the hell does that?

Thanks for being Dick Tomey’s special teams captain. For recovering a muffed punt from Napoleon Kaufman in the Wildcats’ 16-3 victory over No. 1 Washington in 1992.

“Lost an amazing person today,” Dick Tomey’s son Rich posted on social media. “Comforted me so much when I lost my dad. … A true friend, Wildcat, and someone who was always there for me. God Bless you Heath. Love you brother.”

Thanks for being a part of the Desert Swarm vibe. Thanks for being part of what was known internally as the “A—hole Club” — a lifetime group of friends with guys like Rob Waldrop, Tedy Bruschi, Ty Parten, Brant Boyer, Jimmie Hopkins, Brandon Sanders and more who set the tone for one of the best defenses in college football history.

“We played angry,” Bray once said.

Thanks for telling me this story about what it means to be a Wildcat:

In the early 1990s, Tomey was recruiting star high school running back Autry Denson, who was on campus after taking a recruiting trip to Notre Dame, where he eventually signed. Denson laughed — literally laughed — when he saw UA’s weight room and the cubby of an office in McKale Center, where Bray, then an assistant after his playing days, had to deal with a slanted ceiling that prevented him from standing up in some areas.

“But I told him, if you come here, you have friends for the rest of your life. You can call someone at 2 in the morning on a Tuesday,” Bray said.

“And that’s the difference. We all stick together. We sold family in recruiting. We couldn’t sell tradition. We couldn’t sell facilities. We sold the hell out of family. And it worked.”

Thanks for being “Crash.” The nickname might have started due to a series of mishaps on bicycles and various motor vehicles, but it perfectly captured your special teams style.

_{Heath and his son, Mason, a senior QB at Scottsdale Saguaro High (Courtesy of Bray family)}

Thanks for helping to keep generations of Wildcats connected. For being a voice of the past and the present. For being the actual embodiment of Bear Down. For being Red and Blue all the way through.

“He loved this place,” Arizona defensive coordinator Duane Akina – who coached Bray on offense and defense back in the day – told me Saturday night. “He loved this place so much.”

Thanks for, despite not being an All-American or anything like that, being one of the greatest Wildcats of all time.

“He was the rock that kept everyone together,” one of his former teammates texted me.

Thanks for providing me, and many others, colorful quotes over the years that have helped tell the story of Arizona football. Thanks for the off-color stories that might never get published, but we’ll still be laughing about them when we think of you.

Thanks for spending an hour with me last fall to talk about your enduring father-and-son moment captured forever in a newspaper photo, the one at the top of this story, after the 1992 win over Washington: A snapshot for the ages.

I’m grateful I got to tell that story and be a small part of your history.

Thanks, Heath. Thanks for everything.

Bear Down, brother.

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Top photo: Heath and his father Ron Bray hugging after the Arizona-Washington game in 1992 via Ed Compean, Arizona Daily Star